Adding Music To Your iPhone

iPod owners who are accustomed to the usual song management with iTunes will need some getting used to for the iPhone. Instead of the usual drag and drop from library to iPod – things are a little different here. Hope Apple will eventually make music management a little more user friendly with future firmware updates.

Once the iPhone is connected, you’ll be prompted to activate your iPhone. To bypass AT&T activation process, use any of the methods available online. As for me, I used the One Click tool available here.

On the next screen, you will see 6 tabs displaying different items on your iPhone. Obviously, you will need to click on the Music tab for music management.

Now, here’s the part where Apple could improve on. Under Sync Music, you will be given a choice to either sync all songs and playlist or just selected playlists. If sync all songs is selected – you’ll have to wait for iTunes to reload every song into your iPhone again. If an album or song already exists, iTunes will not duplicate them but skip it – hence reducing syncing time. Syncing songs and photos will take a minute or two, relatively fast for a 8Gb model.

If you choose selected playlists instead. iTunes will just add songs in that playlist and not every song in your music library. Problem with this – your iPhone will display tons of playlists which I doubt fussy users like me would appreciate and every other songs previously copied will be erased. So, this basically means, even if you want to add in 1 song, you will have to let iTunes and iPhone play the syncing game over and over again. Sucks. I know.

One thing to note, if you sync your music on one PC and connect the same iPhone to another PC – iTunes will prompt a warning message saying all music currently in the iPhone will be erased if you choose to proceed. This is Apple’s rights management in action.

Overall, adding music to the iPhone is not complicated, but a firmware update to enable the beloved Drag and Drop will be much desired. That’s all we want, Apple. Really, that’s all we want.

Update:

Alpa – May 12, 2008 at 7:52pm

You don’t need to sync your iphone every time. On the info page, just click the option which says something like “I will manually manage my songs on this ipod/iphone” or similar. That way you can drag and drop from your computer to the iphone.

I have a iphone my uncle gave me and I restored it not knowing it would lock the phone then I would have to activate it, but how do I unlock the iphone? With out having to get an account with At&T? I only want to use it as a ipod. I am with Verizon anyway. Any help would be great. Thanks.

i agree. i thought i had an extra setting on. is there any news on apple changing this since last post. this is extremly not welcome by ipod users, and wish it wss detailed or made known when the phone was released. someone had to have noticed it!

I feel you. I don’t understand why Apple choose a different approach in music management for the iPhone. Obviously, the early adopters of the iPhone are seasoned users of iPods – why the change? The latest firmware release 1.0.2 reported to be just bug fixes, but it is a 92.1MB download. Seems no change in this area. We can only hope.

Is your iPhone activated with AT&T? Are you using the latest firmware which is 1.0.2?

Adding music to your iPhone is basically syncing your iTunes Music Library with your iPhone. To do that, have all the music you want to be added into your iPhone placed in iTunes’s music library. Connect your iPhone, launch iTunes. And follow the steps I’ve posted above.

If iPhone still doesn’t show up. Try uninstalling and re-installing the latest version of iTunes.

so basically, you have to leave everything on your hard drive that you want on your iPhone, or you can’t even add one track without fucking EVERYTHING up. That is so retarded, and SO VERY FUCKING APPLE. CLASSIC APPLE BULLSHIT. Fuck you Steve Hand-Jobs.

Actually, there is a way to fool iTunes in thinking that your songs are still in your Library. Drag your mp3s into your iTunes library. Once syncing is complete. Locate those files in your Hardrive, delete them. (Usually found in C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Documents\My Music\iTunes)

So, what you’ll have in your iTunes Library are merely track names of the songs you’ve just deleted. Then, the next time you sync – iTunes will still keep those songs in your iPhone thinking that it actually still exists.

I agree. It is a horrible system. I just bought a 16GB iPHone today and am very dissapointed with the music managment features. Here is the link to leave feedback at apple.com: http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

Strange. If you follow the steps above, it should do it quite easily. I don’t believe iTunes will time out. Please ensure that you follow the most important step to select “Sync All Songs & Playlist” as shown in the last image above.

One only question…I reinstaled windows on my PC…I got another itunes and connected my iPhone…now…iTunes it not letting me see what my iPhone allready contains…So…How would I be able to see all my songs,videos on i tunes before adding another song (and delete everything else)…I just can’t put another song without delleting everything else ?!
Thank you,you are the best !!!

If you have an iphone in europe, which is unlocked for your european simcard, do not update your iphone, it will block it, until you plug in an AT&T simcard. –
Did it once, its really fucked!
Just an warning

You don’t need to sync your iphone every time. On the info page, just click the option which says something like “I will manually manage my songs on this ipod/iphone” or similar. That way you can drag and drop from your computer to the iphone.

Alpay
there is no “I will manually manage my songs on this ipod/iphone” on the iphone. I’m assuming you only have an iPod which made it so easy to manage your music. iPhone users do not have this capability which is why everyone is upset.

Hi bigmacky,
Same problem as Rossoblue, the music and videos already installed in my iphone 3G was from another pc. When I got home and connected it to my laptop w/ itune on it, it does not showed the exsisting music and videos in my iphone. How come is this happened and what will I do to make it showed up so that I can edit it or load/ add on it? Pls help….Thnks

This is a copyright control issue with Apple. Your iPhone is only allowed to sync with 1 computer. So, when you say – upload songs and videos to your iTunes in the office and wish to do so with iTunes at home. NOPE. I believe iTunes will give u a prompt saying this iPhone is synced with another computer. If you wish to proceed, all songs, videos or photos will be erased. So long story short. One iPhone. One computer. 🙂

thanks for the reply bigmacky. ‘m enjoying reading your blog abt the iphone 3G and learned from it.
Another thing can you give me an easy step-by-step on how to upload movies on my iphone using my laptop? Do I need to compress the file to fit in? Thanks

ok so i keep trying to add music to my iphone the second time.. the first time it was easy after i registered and stuff now its becoming hard more of trouble! i hook my iphone to comp then it recognizes it i already have itunes opened. .. ive put the new downloads an ringtones on to my itunes library but then it says backing up iphone then never goes to my music.. ive clicked the music tab and u can check the all songs or the box by playlists. i clicked all songs an then sync at bottom and get nothing! pleeeeeease help asap this is ridiculous for a phone soooo expensive and compact!

Hi Just wanna know if all this is the same for ipod touch too ? cause i’m thinking of getting a ipod touch.If This goes the same for ipod touch,i think i’m gonna have a second thought of getting an ipod touch then..lol.By the way does this goes the same for photos and videos or just for musics only ?

can i use the songs on my iphone as ringtones? giv me simple response please. i dont speak geek. if i can, keep the explanation in words under 12 letters plz lol jk i hav a dictionary lol im kiddin just explain it in geek i hav a phd in electrical engineering

Lol, geek it is. It is fairly simple to create a ringtone out of any song in your library, just do the following steps:

1: obviously, pick a song 🙂

2: choose a 30 second clip from that song to be your ringtone, mark the start and end times of the clip.
now were ready to start.

3: right click the song and go to ‘Get info’

4: select the ‘options’ tab

5: enter the start and stop times you took note of earlier, make sure ‘start time’ and ‘Stop time’ both have their boxes checked.
click ‘Ok’
play the song to check that its the right sample for your ringtone, if its not, redo steps 2-5. the song should start and stop where your told it to.

6: right click on the song and click ‘Create AAC Version’ (windows users may find this option under the “Advanced” menu on the top bar.)
you should now have two copies of the song, make sure that the second copy is 30 seconds or less.

7: right click the new song and click ‘Show in Finder’ or ‘Show in Explorer’ for windows users.

8: change the extension on the new song file from .m4a to .m4r
**windows users may have to go through folder options and un-check the ‘Hide extensions for known file types’ box to be able to change the file type this way.

9: drag the .m4r file to your desktop.

10: in your itunes library, delete the AAC version of your ringtone

11: double click the song on your desktop to add it to the ringtones folder of your itunes library.

12: sync or add the song to your iphone and enjoy!

Note: your new rigntones show up at the top of the ringtone list under ‘Custom Ringtones”.

if the ring tone doesn’t show up at first, power down your iphone and restart it, it should show up now.

Make sure you have Itunes installed on your computer and logged in to your Apple Store Account.

Plug in your Iphone with your data cable, this should start a sync, cancel it by clicking the “x” in Itunes where it says syncing blah-blah… Or by sliding the slider on your iphone.

You should be on the summary page, if not click the “summary” tab, now the last options on this screen need changed.

Unclick auto sync and sync only checked boxes…

Click the manually manage music and videos.

Now click the sideways triangle by your Iphone on the left of Itunes under your Devices. Now just find your movies and songs are stored and drag and drop them to the correct folder (Music, Movies, etc.)

That’s it! Click my name to convert any video to work on your Iphone or Ipod!

hi…im not sure if this happens to anyone else but everytime i connect my iphone it says that itunes cannot read the contents of my iphone (for come frustrating reason) and it asks me to restore it. well ive restored it twice now and there is not difference. the firmware is up to date…hmm…annoying

Just wanted to say how much I appreciated your blog. I have only had an iPhone since the end of April – as a seasoned iPod user – I thought I was seriously missing something. For the longest time I just didn’t add music to my phone because of it. I am glad I found this, it has been so helpful!

Just want to thank you for this as well, sir, as this is my first iPhone and I literally felt like an idiot trying to figure out why I could not drag and drop my music onto my phone. This helped out tons!

I’m sorry if you’ve already addressed this, but I haven’t been able to find a specific answer.

I’ve had my iPhone for almost a year and had been using the “automatically sync music”, checking off the lists I wanted under the “Music” tab, because my iMac music library is much larger than my iPhone can hold.

On iTunes, under Devices, my iPhone shows up; and if I click on the right-facing triangle it turns to face downwards and what I suppose to be media files on my iPhone are displayed.

My question is: are the playlists (the icon of a page with upper-right corner folded and the little quarternote) all *subsets* of the Music folder? ie. If a song is listed under Music, and also under On-The-GO-Playlist 1, is OTGP-1 a subset of Music, or are the songs duplicate?

If I understand your question correctly, you’re asking if songs listed under your iPhone subsets Music, On-The-Go-Playlist 1, On-The-Go-Playlist 2 and etc will be duplicated. The answer is No. It’s mirrored (virtual) but in actual, iTunes will not load the same song twice no matter how many times it appears under your iPhone’s subsets. 🙂

My laptop hard drive died and I lost all my music and phones on the laptop. I have all the contents synced in my iphone before so I think that’s a backup.

After changing the HD and re-install windows and itune, when I connect the iphone to sync, it warns me to erase all the contents on my phone. Obviously the itune library on my laptop is empty. I tried to check the “Manually manage music and videos” and click “Apply”, itune still wants to erase all my stuff:

“The iphone is synced with another itunes library. Do you want to erase this iphone and sync with this itune library?”

There is only one option to “Erase and Sync”. I could’t switch to manual mode!!! How can I recover/copy out the contents on my iphone then?? Thanks.

download a third party ipod/iphone manager and download your music to your hard drive before syncing, then re-add your music 🙂 but be careful which third party programs you use, as some can be harmful to your iphone or computer.

I got about 75% of the way through this blog and felt i needed to contribute my two cents, please skip this if your not interested.

First of all, i’m not sure how old some of these posts are, but this is how it stands:

Music control is EXACTLY the same as with ipod music control, with a few minor tweaks. if you have trouble with the automatic syncing, please use the “Manually manage music and videos” option on the main page (the one with the tabs) of your iphone. not sure if this will work for earlier or later versions of the iphone, but it works with my 3G V3.1.2 on ITunes9 V9.0.2.25. This allows you to go into your regular music playlist, and drag the music you want into your iphone music directory. this also works for other regular iphone items. E.g. podcasts.

Second of all, everything about this product, how to use it, and it’s shortcomings are already on posts like this, meaning if you had spent the time reading up on this product before buying it, you wouldnt be posting angry comments about it, because you wouldnt have wasted your money in the first place, in the future, please ensure you look up an expensive buy before buying it, as it will save you from more work and wasted money later.

This is just my two cents, and by no means do i mean to insult anybody, if you have any questions about itunes, feel free to post a reply, i’ll get an e-mail and post as i can, i have a fair bit of experience i’m more than willing to share.

Drake, your comments on to spend time to check product shortcomings are pathetic. Fırst of all such do-it-all devices has tons of features and only a sociopath would check thoroughly. Secondly all the hype and advertisements about the product blinds people into thinking that the interface and functions are extremely user friendly, logical, dumb-proof, or at least like-an-ipod. Even without it, not being able to add 1 song, while synching not being able to keep current songs if they do not appear on the itunes is plainly stupid, irreasonable and crappy. Who buys into “protectiomn of rights” b.s. ? If this is a computer you have absolutely no way to protect them whatever you do.

Do not insult people for not spending timne for an instrument that is supposed to be a tool to make their life easier and that is advertised to be very sophisticared.

Actually Mr. Andrew, it is completely feasible that someone should at least make a cursory effort at researching a product that is so very expensive, you wouldn’t for instance buy a car without checking out how it drives, now would you? and as for adding one song, the ipod touch and iphone is perfectly capable of doing that, simply turn off the automatic syncing features, do it yourself, and stop being lazy. simple. also, without automatic syncing enabled, you are able to keep your current songs on your ipod/iphone while adding new ones, even if the old ones are gone from your itunes. please, do us all a favor, and before insulting me for my comment, learn about the product you ‘know’ so well.

anyway, adding an itunes card is fairly easy, just go into your itunes program, click on store at the top, click on View my account. on the account page you will see a payment option, click on edit payment options, if theres a credit card on there already, you can leave that on there, just below that information is a link to “Redeem itunes card or gift card” click on that and follow the prompts 🙂

Argh! I purchased an album on a different computer, which placed it in the owner’s itunes library. Now, I’m having a hard time adding the album to my iphone! It says that if I manually want to add the album, it will replace all existing music with the music in the owners library? All I want is to add that album!
Help??????

you will need to have your iphone synced to that computer to use it to manage your music. syncing it will delete all your music. the easiest method to get that album would be to go to your own computer (the one already synced with your iphone) and log into the account you used to purchase the album. click on account, and authorize computer. once this is done, click on store at the top menu and click ‘check for available downloads’ this will download all music and video purchases to your computer, then you can add it to your phone without having to re-sync to another computer.

you can cancel backup by clicking the little cross on the right hand side of the words at the top. but it’s usually better to allow your ipod/iphone to backup at least once before changing anything, as it gives you a starting point to easily return to.

Man i try to drag my favorite song onto my iPhone after doing that manual drag option and syncing it, but it never appears, over and over im doing this and it just says syncing for 3 seconds and my ipod app just says configuring or whatever then goes back to normal WTF!!!!!!!!!

Emilio,
there are a couple things that may be the problem, first, make sure you iTunes is configured to manually manage music. Second, ensure that the file type of the song you are trying to add is correct, for instance, if it is in m4r format then it will go into the “ringtones” folder. It needs to be mp3 or a comparable format like m4a.

The only way to currently be able to remove music from your iphone/ipod is to use a third party music manager, designed to remove music from your device. be very careful with these programs as they are not made by reputable companies, and could contain malicious software designed to harm your device or computer. another option is if you have bought all of your iphone music using itunes, then you simply need to log in to your account on your computer with your iphone connected, click on store, and authorize computer, once your computer is linked to your itunes account, you can just click on ‘Purchased’ on the left hand side menu to see everything you have purchased on your account 🙂

you may need to click on ‘Store’ and ‘Check for available downloads’ in the upper menu bar.

I have a PC and I am running an old Iphone software version. 3.1.3 (7E18) on a 3G

I did not want to update to 4.0 version feeling this should not be necessary so I kept trying. Anyhoodle, my mistake may be very basic but I hope it helps some of you.

I was just trying to get music over to my phone. that’s it. and stolen files from limewire. Could care less about syncing everything but I got multiple error messages at different sync stages: with yahoo contact not syncing or there ‘not being an internet connection’ or ‘photos cannot be updated because of missing folder’… all these error messages disrupting the sync before even getting to the music sync portion.

I kept syncing anyway (someone said it took them many tries). Well I finally realized my remedy. Here is what I did, beginning with taking the new music files and adding them to the itunes playlist which I was attempting to update to my iphone:

1. Drag new music files into itunes playlist
2. Go to music tab of itunes and click sync (bottom right).
3. After error message appears, check the playlist to which you just added new music files. (You may need to try the sync many times, even if you are getting the same error because you want to induce the result of 4. below)
4. Find the music file(s) you recently moved into that playlist. They should now be marked on the left side of the playlist, right next to the song name checkbox, with a small exclamation point or question mark, denoting an file error. Or perhaps Itunes cannot find it? Whatever
5. Double click on the music file that is demarked as such
6. A prompt will appear asking to find the file
7. Find the file, wherever you put it, and double click it.
8. The music file should start playing in itunes now, confirming the file was found
9. Now, click sync again in the music tab of itunes and it should sync the new files to your iphone